Recluse

My Gram made a black walnut cake with penuche frosting every year for my dad's birthday. I have the recipe, and still make it when I'm feeling nostalgic, or sometimes for my own birthday. I'm not usually a fan of rot-your-teeth-sweet frosting, but this stuff was divine. She also made an excellent shoofly cake. Mmmm.

I've been using nutritiondata.com for about a year, and have been pleased with it. It does let you figure out the approximate data for recipes, as well as individual foods, and it's easy to tweak the quantities of each ingredient.

Just got an EYB account set up today, and am totally in love. Sad I missed the lifetime membership, but the yearly fee is quite reasonable. Of the cookbooks I've entered so far, about half of them have been indexed (16,287 recipes!), and a few preliminary ingredient searches have been encouraging as far as the number of recipe results that they returned. This will make figuring out what to do with my weekly CSA goods so much easier! Really looking forward to seeing the site grow, and someday being able to add books without ISBN numbers (I feel like Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook is glaring at me for leaving it out, poor thing).

104 for me. I just decreased my collection by about a third, and would like to whittle it down more to make room for books that I might actually use. Amazon and used book sales make keeping the numbers down something of a challenge. I frequently have to remind myself that I'll probably be moving within the year, and that getting rid of things is more sensible than acquiring them at this point.

Seconding Love Soup as a great soup book. I particularly like the Caramelized Cabbage Soup. The recipes are all vegetarian, but as an omnivore I still enjoy it very much, along with Anna Thomas's other books. I may have to pick up a copy of Splendid Soups, though. In the dead of winter, a few more recipes couldn't hurt.